This report looks closely at the extent and kind of information about copyright practices needed by faculty at US colleges and universities. The report helps its readers to answer questions such as: how much do faculty need information about copyright? How much have they used and benefited from information about copyright provided by academic libraries? What policies in this area do faculty want libraries to follow? How satisfied are they with current policies? What are the demographic characteristics of faculty who have consulted attorneys about copyright issues? Which faculty go to librarians and which rely on peers for copyright advice? Which copyright issues most concern faculty? Are they more inclined to query about copyright issues related to open access? Or to issues related to making material available in their classes? The study presents specific data for faculty interest in a broad range of copyright issues, including but not limited to open access, copyright for data, issues with commercial article sharing platforms, negotiation of author contracts, use of audio-visual materials, copyright issues in citation and much more.
This study is based on data from a survey of 806 higher education faculty randomly chosen from nearly 500 colleges and universities in the USA. Data is broken out by personal variables such as work title, gender, personal income level, academic discipline, age and other variables, as well as institutional indicators such as college or university type or Carnegie class, enrollment size, public or private status and others. Readers can compare the copyright needs and practices of faculty in medicine to those in the social sciences, for example, or to business faculty. Also, copyright information consumption of associate professors can be compared to that for full professors, or copyright consultation practices of men to that for women, etc. etc.
Just a few of this 118-page report’s many findings are that:
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Broken out by work title, associate professors had the strongest need for information about copyright.
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26.4% of full professors sampled had ever consulted a lawyer over a copyright issue.
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Broken out by type of college, dissatisfaction with the services to advise or inform about copyright practices was highest at specialized colleges, such as seminaries, theater schools and other similar institutions.
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34.12% of survey participants felt that they had a need for copyright advice about making their research available in repositories or other open access venues.